Luxury Beliefs Are Ruining America

It’s very easy to say that when…

It's very easy to be a critic when you have no skin in the game or sit on the sidelines and tell the people who were actually in the arena what they should have done.

Similarly, it's very easy to push ideas and suggest policies when you are insulated from the results.

It's very easy to say, "no one should be allowed to own a gun" if you don't own a gun or "landlords shouldn't be able to evict people that don't pay their rent" if you're not a landlord.

This brings us to a related concept created by Rob Henderson called "luxury beliefs."

Here's an excerpt from a talk Henderson gave on the subject that gets the idea across:

Throughout my experiences traveling along the class ladder, I made a discovery:

Luxury beliefs have, to a large extent, replaced luxury goods.

Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.

...The chief purpose of luxury beliefs is to indicate evidence of the believer's social class and education.

Members of the luxury belief class promote these ideas because it advances their social standing and because they know that the adoption of these policies or beliefs will cost them less than others.

Advocating for defunding the police or promoting the belief we are not responsible for our actions are good ways of advertising membership of the elite.

Why are affluent people more susceptible to luxury beliefs? They can afford it. And they care the most about status.

...In short, luxury beliefs are the new status symbols.

They are honest indicators of one's social position, one's level of wealth, where one was educated, and how much leisure time they have to adopt these fashionable beliefs.

And just as many luxury goods often start with the rich but eventually become available to everyone, so it is with luxury beliefs.

But unlike luxury goods, luxury beliefs can have long term detrimental effects for the poor and working class. However costly these beliefs are for the rich, they often inflict even greater costs on everyone else.

Although Rob Henderson deserves a lot of credit for coming up with this, what he wrote there also reminds me of some quotes from Thomas Sowell’s extraordinary book, "The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy," which came out way back in 1995:

“The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?”

“In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly ‘thinking people’ who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes, but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.”

Put another way, the "elite" in society used to distinguish themselves from the hoi-polloi with WHAT THEY OWNED. They had the mansion, the expensive car, the fancy clothes, and the summer home in Martha's Vineyard.

Of course, some of this still goes on. However, as the world has spread out and moved online, those status symbols are not as effective as they used to be. Sure, you can still post pictures on Instagram, but how many times can you post your 5,000-square-foot mansion and Bugatti before it gets tacky? So, the elite need another way to distinguish themselves. “Luxury beliefs” fill this role.

The elite can take positions that they pay no price for whatsoever, but that can be devastating to other people. It’s very easy to talk about “defunding the police” when you have armed bodyguards; call for treating criminals leniently when you live in guarded, gated communities; and demand that we bring in backward immigrants by the millions when the only way those people can get into your community is if they work for you as a maid or landscaper.

Additionally, this is a great concept, but it doesn’t go far enough because who constitutes “the elite” can be a very elastic concept in a world where virtue signaling online can be treated as more significant than doing meaningful things in the real world.

Does taking the same positions as the “elite” on certain issues make you elite? It shouldn’t, but the Left in America have tried to create a little club for themselves where they’re painted as the only good, virtuous, caring, intelligent, and non-racist people by virtue of their membership.

How do you get into the club? Well, you don’t actually have to do anything, and even better, you don’t need to personally exemplify any of those values liberals claim they hold by default. Instead, all you have to do to be in the “good, virtuous, caring, intelligent, and non-racist” club is mindlessly parrot certain positions, most of which do not harm you, even if they do great harm to other people.

It’s very easy to advocate for DEI, USAID, and funneling massive amounts of taxpayer dollars to Ivy League universities when 95% of the people who benefit from all those things are liberals.

It’s very easy to allow “mostly peaceful” rioters to burn down your city if you’re protected from them and you’re confident liberals in Congress will send you money to repay the damages.

It’s very easy for a wealthy family to call for drugs to be decriminalized when they can pull strings to protect their kids from the consequences, afford to send them to drug rehab centers, and float them for a few years if they fall to pieces because of addiction.

It’s very easy to call for other people’s lifestyles to be forcibly cut back when you’re flying in private jets, living in a mansion, and buying “carbon credits” you say make up for it.

It’s very easy for a feminist to say, “believe all women,” when they’re never going to be falsely accused of sexual assault.

It’s very easy for a business owner to push for illegal aliens who will allow him to make a bigger profit when he passes all the costs on to other people.

It’s very easy to demand that other people pay off your college loans.

It’s very easy to say, “shoplifting shouldn’t be a crime” when you don’t own the store that’s being robbed blind.

It’s very easy to trash owning cars when you’re a liberal who lives in a city that has convenient mass transportation, as opposed to in a rural area where mass transportation isn’t practical.

It’s very easy for politicians, lawyers, or celebrities to call for allowing illegal aliens to flood into our country when their jobs aren’t at risk, their kids won’t see them in private school, and they won’t have to deal with them.

It’s very easy to call for raising other people’s taxes.

It’s very easy to say “cash bail is unjust” when the criminals that are released aren’t going to be going back to your neighborhood.

In a healthy society, there are always going to be people taking positions that don’t directly impact them because they believe it’s good for the country. For example, I’ve never murdered anyone or been murdered, but I’m very much in favor of throwing the book at murderers because I think it’s good for the country.

However, we’ve moved far beyond that to people advocating positions without caring how it impacts anyone else, or worse yet, calling for policies designed to benefit them at the expense of everyone else. The selfishness with which these people continue to pursue their luxury beliefs at everyone else’s expense is ruining our country.

---